Bordesholm in Germany became a showcase for how entire communities could switch over to renewable energy with the backing of energy storage capacity.

Known historically for its oil and in the present day for deploying large amounts of wind energy and latterly for deploying batteries at wind farms, the US state of Texas is less well known for solar-plus-storage projects.

In the past week, developer RES Group has just got a front-of-meter battery project underway for a utility company in northern Germany, while storage system provider Tesvolt has just signed a deal with another utility in the European country to distribute energy storage behind-the-meter for commercial customers.

ADS-TEC has just completed and connected a 2.5MW energy storage system in Germany, designed to smooth the variable output of wind power generation, while RES Group has just been awarded a 10MW energy storage project contract in the same country.

Major Japanese business and government entities have extended their involvement in energy storage with the announcement of the country’s first virtual power plants, an investment in a US frequency regulation project and partnerships on technology.

Both energy storage asset owners and companies setting up to provide operations and maintenance (O&M) services for battery installations need to commit to higher levels of due diligence when selecting contractors according to RES Group’s head of solar and O&M.